One little incident occurred upon the road.  As we were passing by a quaint old mansion, which stood back from the road, surrounded by a deep court, Mr. S. said to me, “There is a friend here who would like to see thee, if thou hast no objections,” and went on to inform me that she was an aged woman, who had taken a deep interest in the abolition of slavery since the time of its first inception under Clarkson and Wilberforce, though now lying very low on a sick bed.  Of course we all expressed our willingness to stop, and the carriage was soon driving up the gravelled walk towards the house.  We were ushered into a comfortable sitting room, which looked out on beautiful grounds, where the velvet grass, tall, dark trees, and a certain quaint air of antiquity in disposition and arrangement, gave me a singular kind of pleasure; the more so, that it came to me like a dream; that the house and the people were unknown to me, and the whole affair entirely unexpected.

I was soon shown into a neat chamber, where an aged woman was lying in bed.  I was very much struck and impressed by her manner of receiving me.  With deep emotion and tears, she spoke of the solemnity and sacredness of the cause which had for years lain near her heart.  There seemed to be something almost prophetic in the solemn strain of assurance with which she spoke of the final extinction of slavery throughout the world.

I felt both pleased and sorrowful.  I felt sorrowful because I knew, if all true Christians in America had the same feelings, that men, women, and children, for whom Christ died, would no more be sold in my country on the auction block.

There have been those in America who have felt and prayed thus nobly and sincerely for the heathen in Burmah and Hindostan, and that sentiment was a beautiful and an ennobling one; but, alas! the number has been few who have felt and prayed for the heathenism, and shame of our own country; for the heathenism which sells the very members of the body of Christ as merchandise.

When we were again on the road, we were talking on the change of times in England since railroads began; and Mr. S. gave an amusing description of how the old lords used to travel in state, with their coaches and horses, when they went up once a year on a solemn pilgrimage to London, with postilions and outriders, and all the country gaping and wondering after them.

“I wonder,” said one of us, “if Shakspeare were living, what he would say to our times, and what he would think of all the questions that are agitating the world now.”  That he did have thoughts whose roots ran far beyond the depth of the age in which he lived, is plain enough from numberless indications in his plays; but whether he would have taken any practical interest in the world’s movements is a fair question.  The poetic mind is not always the progressive one; it has, like moss and ivy, a need for something old to cling to and germinate upon.  The artistic temperament, too, is soft and sensitive; so there are all these reasons for thinking that perhaps he would have been for keeping out of the way of the heat and dust of modern progress.  It does not follow because a man has penetration to see an evil, he has energy to reform it.